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Showing posts with label Capital Adequacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capital Adequacy. Show all posts

May 6, 2009

Bank of America needs 34 billion USD to pass Fed's stress test

America's largest bank, Bank of America, is reported to require additional 33.9 billion USD to meet the capital target set by Federal Reserve during the stress test. The stress test also known as Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP) was conducted by Fed on 19 biggest financial institutions to find out the capital that will be required if the recession becomes deeper. The results of the test are expected to start coming from this week onwards. Speculation is rife that most of the banks will need additional capital to pass the test.

BofA had about 240 billion dollars of shareholder's equity capital as on 31st March 2009. This was about 10.3% of its total assets (2.3 trillion dollars). Since 2007 BofA has increased its shareholder's capital significantly to deal with the financial crisis and economic recession. However, if the macro-economic situation worsens in near term BofA would require still more capital as the results of SCAP of Fed would show.

According to a ews article by UK's 'The Guardian', BofA could sell a part of its stake in Chinese bank 'China Construction Bank' (CCB). The stake sale could fetch BofA about 8 billion USD. Even with this sale, BofA will have to garner the remaining 26 billion USD from other sources. In case of no other option left, it may have to convert some of the government's prefferred shares to common shares, thereby diluting the existing shareholder's stake.

Apr 25, 2009

Fed Stress test for 19 biggest US Financial Institutions

US Federal Reserve is putting the 19 biggest US financial institutions under stress test to check their stability if the economic situation worsens. Those under the stress test along with their P/E and market capitalization as on 24 April 2009 are listed below:

Name of Finanical Institution P/E Market Cap (Billion USD) Code
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. 58.6 125.4 JPM
Wells Fargo & Co. 7.8 90.8 WFC
Goldman Sachs Group 27.1 61.0 GS
Bank of America Corp. 12.0 58.2 BAC
US Bancorp 16.5 33.4 USB
Bank of NY Mellon Corp. 27.4 30.9 BN
American Express Co. 13.3 29.3 AXP
MetLife 6.4 24.0 MET
Morgan Stanley - 23.8 MS
PNC Financial Services Group 18.0 19.2 PNC
Citigroup - 17.6 C
State Street Corp. 9.4 16.1 STT
BB&T Corp. 9.7 13.1 BBT
Capital One Financial Corp. - 7.5 COF
SunTrust Banks Inc. 18.3 5.7 STI
Regions Financial Corp. - 3.9 RF
Keycorp - 3.5 KEY
Fifth Third Bancorp - 2.1 FITB
GMAC LLC - -

The stress test which is aimed at assessing the capital adequacy of the major financial institutions under various scenarios comes under the SCAP (The Supervisory Capital Assessment Program). The banks that perform poorly under this stress test will be asked to increase their capital and will come under pressure from the investors. Fed has also released a 21 page document stating the methodology which it will use for the stress testing these institutions. The results of the test will start coming after May 4, 2009. One reason behind Fed stating the methodology 10 days in advance is to prevent any shock to the investors. The press release about the methodology was done about an hour after the closing of the US market for the weekend, thus giving analysts time to analyse and digest the information.

Resources:
The Fed's press release
The Fed's stress testing methodology